153 comments:

"Her action undermines the integrity of the committee's oversight work and jeopardizes its ability to secure candid voluntary testimony relating to the independent recollections of future witnesses," spokesman Taylor Foy wrote in a statement."

Gosh, Democrats sure love ruining investigations of their criminals. Funny, that. Kind of like sexual harassment is wrong, unless you are Bill Clinton or Bob Menedez. He's still in the Senate, isn't he?

Complain that she gave away secrets (i.e. the Rs on the committee (like the one in the oval) are full of shit)? Or, complain that there were too many redacted lines in the document, such that we deserve to know more info?

Hey, come to find out that Strzok was leaking stuff to the Wall Street Journal just days before the election, and he is a counterintelligence guru! I like this. I am getting sick of the selective leaks of little fragments by both sides.

"He wants to be very careful to protect his sources,” attorney Josh Levy said during the Aug. 22 Senate Judiciary Committee interview of his client. “Somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work.”

"When asked if he knew who the Trump campaign source was, Simpson declined to answer on the basis of "security, " adding, "There are some things I know that I just don't feel comfortable sharing because obviously it's been in the news a lot lately that people who get in the way of the Russians tend to get hurt.""

A co-founder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS acknowledged in a new court document that his company hired the wife of a senior Justice Department official to help investigate then-candidate Donald Trump last year.

The confirmation from Glenn Simpson came in a signed declaration filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ..."

Fusion GPS statement on Nellie Ohr, reported by CNN on December 12, 2017:

"Fusion GPS frequently works with highly credentialed subject matter experts. Nellie Ohr is a widely-recognized scholar on Russia and the former Soviet Union. She speaks fluent Russian and holds a B.A. in Russian history and literature from Harvard and a PhD in Russian history from Stanford; she has been a Russia scholar at the Wilson Center and taught at Vassar College."

December 15, 2017Senate Intel to interview Justice Dept. official with Fusion GPS ties

'A Justice Department official with ties to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the controversial Trump dossier, is expected to be interviewed Monday by the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to a source with knowledge of the interview.

Bruce Ohr had previously served in the deputy attorney general's office, but according to a source familiar with the situation, was demoted amid the discovery of certain meetings with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who assembled the dossier.

Earlier this week, Simpson disclosed in an unrelated court filing that Ohr's wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion on "research and analysis of Mr. Trump," and that Simpson met with Bruce Ohr, "at his request, after the November 2016 election to discuss our findings regarding Russia and the election."'

So when this arrived it was also right around 8 the time I think -- Trump had said weird things 9 about the Russians and Putin and things that are10 very atypical for a Republican and that people11 found to be odd.

So Trump’s clear joke about Hillary’s destruction of evidence under subpoena is evidence that he was working with the Russians?

I wrote some of the very first stories17 about the Chinese government's interference in the18 1996 presidential election which triggered a19 massive national security investigation, numerous20 prosecutions, lots of business for Bob Muse, and a21 lot of congressional hearings, congressional22 inquiries. And in that episode it was eventually23 dug out by congressional investigations that the24 fundraisers, the Asian fundraisers were Chinese25 intelligence assets.

LOL, spit it out! Bill Clinton! They gave money to Bill Clinton, he put a trillion dollars worth of coal out of reach and gave China missile tech that threatens the US today!

So by this time Debbie WassermanSchultz has been the subject of a very aggressivehacking campaign, weaponized hack, the likes ofwhich, you know, have never really been seen.

LOL! Hey, what’s going on with that guy who tried to flee the country and who owned a money laundering operation, and who also had DWS’s passwords? Why didn’t DWS allow the FBI look at the servers?

So far, this is all a big nothing, he is repeating what he reads from Collusion Theorists and interjects it tangentially into his testimony if there is any possibly plausible interpretation that it backs up what is claimed in the “dossier.”

Crap, now I have to read the dossier! Oh well, I will finish this first.

So the question by now of whether this was 6 Russia and whether this might have something to do 7 with the other information that we'd received was, 8 you know, the immediate question, and I think this 9 is also -- by the time this memo was written Chris10 had already met with the FBI about the first memo.11 So he's -- if I can interpret a little bit here.12 In his mind this is already a criminal matter,13 there's already a potential national security14 matter here.

So Steele went to the FBI based on the first memo in the “dossier.” I might have to read that one before continuing.

Seems like something the public has a right to see. What's the harm? I'm sure she wouldn't have disclosed it if she thought it impaired the investigation. That would make about as much sense as Trump firing Comey because he treated Hillary unfairly.

“You know, my understanding was that they would have gotten into who his sources were, how he knew certain things, and, you know, other details based on their own intelligence,” Simpson said. “Essentially, what he told me was they had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source and that — that they — my understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that they believed Chris’s information might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization.”

Simpson would not say who the FBI’s source was, but confirmed that it was someone seperate from Steele’s own sources and said that, “It was someone like us who decided to pick up the phone and report something.”

Simpson later clarified that he wasn’t sure if the intelligence that the FBI had received had come from the Trump campaign or the Trump Organization (i.e. Trump’s businesses).

“[W]e did not have the detailed conversations where he would debrief me on his discussions with the FBI,” Simpson said. “He would say very generic things like, ‘I saw them, they asked me a lot of questions, sounds like they have another source or they have another source.’ He wouldn’t put words in their mouth.”

The former British intelligence officer that authored the so-called Trump dossier was told the FBI had someone inside President Trump’s world giving FBI agents information.

“[M]y understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that they believed Chris might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization, Simpson said in his testimony, referring to Christopher Steele, the dossier’s author.

I'll add because I didn't consider this tobe -- you know, there was no objective herepolitically because you can't -- in an ordinaryelection I know from my decades of dealing withU.S. elections that you can't expect the governmentor the FBI to be of any use in a campaign becausethe DOJ has rules against law enforcement gettinginvolved in investigations in the middle of acampaign and this was obviously -- you know, thisobviously became a huge issue.

Director Comey sent his letter to Congress 8 reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's 9 e-mails. That episode, you know, obviously created10 some concern that the FBI was intervening in a11 political campaign in contravention of12 long-standing Justice Department regulation.

LOL, you mean interfering with at Democrat’s campaign, right?

So far, and I include the section Inga referred to, we have nothing but vague suspicions based on interpretations of Trump’s joke, and based on an assessment of the DNC hacking by CrowdStrike that has since fallen apart under examination, and based on claims of Russia hacking servers that the FBI was not allowed to examine, even though they were doing this VERY IMPORTANT investigation into Hillary’s opponent.

Whoever the source is that the FBI had in the Trump campaign seems to have transmitted nothing but vague suspicions too. More magic eight ball stuff, will all of the context stripped, which seems to be this guy’s specialty.

"When asked if he knew who the Trump campaign source was, Simpson declined to answer on the basis of "security, " adding, "There are some things I know that I just don't feel comfortable sharing because obviously it's been in the news a lot lately that people who get in the way of the Russians tend to get hurt.""

-- Oddly enough, if we could trust people like Feinstein not to leak closed meeting transcripts, he shouldn't have felt any concern revealing that information.

Sometime thereafter the FBI -- I understandChris severed his relationship with the FBI out ofconcern that he didn't know what was happeninginside the FBI and there was a concern that the FBIwas being manipulated for political ends by theTrump people and that we didn't really understandwhat was going on. So he stopped dealing withthem.

"Sometime thereafter the FBI -- I understandChris severed his relationship with the FBI out ofconcern that he didn't know what was happeninginside the FBI and there was a concern that the FBIwas being manipulated for political ends by theTrump people and that we didn't really understandwhat was going on. So he stopped dealing withthem."

Again, how does Steele know ANYTHING about what's "happening inside the FBI"?

I suspect he doesn't. The only real question is who is spinning this yarn; Steele or Simpson?

No. There was a drunk foreign policy "advisor", George Papadopoulos. According to WaPo he was the other source referenced by Steele, and either Simpson or Steele got the relationship between the source and the FBI wrong, or the FBI fed them inaccurate information.

MR. SIMPSON: I think I was saying we did nothave the detailed conversations where he woulddebrief me on his discussions with the FBI. Hewould say very generic things like I saw them, theyasked me a lot of questions, sounds like they haveanother source or they have another source. Hewouldn’t put words in their mouth.

"...this sounds as if it may be a different person inside the Trump circle."

“Why?”

I’ve read that this person actually may have called the FBI and reported this, Papadopolous was arrested and then he started singing. That’s what makes it sound like it wasn’t Papadopoulos. WaPo is reporting it was Papadoplous according to Iggy above 8:33PM, so who knows who it really was? I guess we’ll find out one day.

Isn't it interesting that you can get an FBI investigation kicked off by a 28 year old, drunken blowhard puffing up his chest in a bar. What are the odds? I would think a BS dossier peddled by GPS Fusion would be a likelier catalyst.

Simpson would not say who the FBI’s source was, but confirmed that it was someone seperate from Steele’s own sources and said that, “It was someone like us who decided to pick up the phone and report something.”

Simpson later clarified that he wasn’t sure if the intelligence that the FBI had received had come from the Trump campaign or the Trump Organization (i.e. Trump’s businesses).

Again, at this time, you know, while we21 believed that we had very credible reporting here,22 you know, what we really -- we just wanted people23 in official positions to ascertain whether it was24 accurate or not.

Survey says! NO!

Still haven’t read anything new or incriminating here, just that Fusion was alarmed by public reports, never substantiated, that Russia had hacked the DNC, and yet the servers were not allowed to be examined, and nobody cares that a person who had access to everything was apparently involved in criminal activities and money laundering, and had been paid inordinate amounts of money by the DNC.

So it seems like a lot of vague associative stuff with no hard links. Yes, Russia tries to hack servers.

I don’t know if Steele was just assuming it was someone inside Trump’s circle or if he knew for sure.

TPM may not have reported this section of the transcript that I quoted above, but here it is again.

MR. SIMPSON: I think I was saying we did nothave the detailed conversations where he woulddebrief me on his discussions with the FBI. He[Steele] would say very generic things like I saw them, theyasked me a lot of questions, sounds like they haveanother source or they have another source. Hewouldn’t put words in their mouth.

So maybe it’s all a wild goose chase. looking for this. source inside Trump’s circle. Certainly, on further questioning, as I quoted here, he was a lot more equivocal as to whether there was some kine of MOLE, as Inga said, in the Trump campaign. The news story about the Aussie diplomate and the drunken ramblings of Popadopolis or whatever his name is certainly fit the testimony perfectly well.

And all you have to do is read the reports of Steele's hilariously walkback while under oath in the London courtroom where he had to be a lot more honest about how nothing he had was corroborated.

Literally, LITERALLY, the ONLY fake hoax dossier "claim" that has been corroborated was Carter Page went to Moscow, which everyone has known forever and Carter Page has told everyone since day one.

The funniest part? Steele couldn't even corroborate who Page met with, even though Page had already told everyone!!

LOL

Once again, if an oppo research firm comes to you and says we want you to collect garbage on an opposing candidate and we want you to call up Russians and offer them cash for info, I GUARANTEE the russians will continue to come up with whatever you want for as long as you want.....and for as long as you keep paying!

“Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive suing BuzzFeed News, is asking a federal judge for help in compelling the testimony of Christopher Steele, whose 35 page dossier of Trump research was published by BuzzFeed in January.

On Wednesday, Gubarev’s lawyers filed a motion in the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida asking the judge on the case, Ursula Ungaro, to submit a request for international judicial assistance with a court in London, where Steele lives and works.”

Drago claimed Steele testified under oath in a London courtroom. Has the court date even happened yet? On what date did Stelle supposedly testify in a London courtroom? Or is Drago full of shit, as usual?

“And all you have to do is read the reports of Steele's hilariously walkback while under oath in the London courtroom where he had to be a lot more honest about how nothing he had was corroborated.———————————-“Mr Gubarev filed a libel lawsuit against Buzzfeed News for publishing its contents, part of which alleged that Russian agents pressured him to plant viruses and bugs, and steal data “altering operations against the Democratic Party leadership” during the 2016 US election.

He has denied these claims.

Now. Judge Ursula Ungaro of the US District Court in southern Florida has ruled that lawyers for Mr Gubarev can now ask permission of the UK government to question MI6's former Moscow-based charge on funding and source details of the dossier.

Valentin Gurvits, one of Mr Gubarev's attorneys, told ABC News he will likely be the first to speak with Mr Steele under oath.

"I know that he is trying very hard to prevent that from happening," he added. “

OK, finished it, and there is nothing new in it but Simpson’s explanation of his meetings with the Russian lawyer.

So according to this, Steele was so upset about the golden showers thing, which is actually pretty funny, and might be true, IDK, I mean, they peed on the bed, not Trump, so “golden shower” is not really the correct terminology, and Trump’s joke about the fact that Hillary had deleted a shit-ton of evidence from the time, BTW, that she was taking many dozens of millions of dollars from Putin, and the fact that Russia conducts hacking activities, and bingo! Let’s sick the FBI on Trump, and make sure that the press knows we did it!

Of course he is always very clear to say that the Russians never really had anything on St Hillary! Not our squeaky-clean Hillary that Putin had paid scores of millions to!

Oh yeah, and the Russians gave the info to Trump at the Trump Tower meeting even though the “dossier” says that they had been feeding Trump compromising information on Hillary for FIVE FUCKING YEARS prior to the campaign!

I think the main thing that the Democrats get from this is to put another explanation behind the fact that Fusion met with the Russian lawyer both before and after the meeting at Trump Tower. He says she speaks no English and he speaks no Russian and the meetings were purely “social” having to do with the fact that she had hired Fusion before.

He could be lying, of course. I kind of feel like he might be, but that’s just a feeling from reading the whole damn thing.

“Steele has provided written filings, testimony, under penalty of perjury, to the London Court where the libel case will be heard.”

Ah, so you are full of shit. Being deposed is not testifying under oath “IN A LONDON COURTROOM”, now is it? I’d love to see the court filings, because I surely wouldn’t take your word or the word of your sources that he walked back his original report in the Dossier.

Yes she's like Otto in a fish called wanda speaking of Belgian Aristotle and the London underground as a political movement. Btw you know who owns the independent a former?? kgb operative and oligarch named lybimov, who was expelled from the UK in 1971.

“Inga believes that depositions don't count if they don't occur in the physical location of the courtroom.”

An oath is taken, yes indeed but a deposition happens as a part of discovery, silly man, it is not the testimony in a courtroom DURING the trial, as YOU stated.

“Overview. A deposition is a witness's sworn out-of-court testimony. It is used to gather information as part of the discovery process and, in limited circumstances, may be used at trial. The witness being deposed is called the "deponent."”

You and your silly friend Exiled are looking pretty ignorant at this point.

Oh yeah, and Simpson takes the position that the “dossier” was not paid for by Hillary, it was just that Steele is such a “boy scout” that was his term, that he wrote it up on his own time.

Of course, Hillary said, I mean perjured in her campaign filings that the payment to Fusion was for “legal expenses” which is clearly not the case, nothing Simpson describes doing for Clinton is anything other than a campaign expense, opposition research. And of course that money was paid to a foreign spy to go and listen to tales told by Putin spies, who were more than happy to share with him the intimate details of Putin’s business.

It would be interesting to know who it was that was claimed to have been killed. it would also be interesting to know the name of Steele’s contact in the FBI? Could it be the Zelig of this story, Strzok? IDK.

Tim at large: "Oh yeah, and Simpson takes the position that the “dossier” was not paid for by Hillary, it was just that Steele is such a “boy scout” that was his term, that he wrote it up on his own time."

Yep.

Hillary and the DNC (but I repeat myself!) pay Perkins-Coie. Perkins-Coie pay Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS hires Steele. Steele does what he has to do to get Putins pals to provide the necessary lies.

And in the end? All the dems claim no one was actually paid and besides, working directly with Putin's pals to generate dirt on a US Presidential candidate and then injecting that foreign BS into our campaign is TOTES COOL!

Do you know how I know it's totally cool?..........Because they did it all outside a courtroom!!

The whole thing looks like CYA and whatever you do, don’t say anything bad about Hillary. Of course, he did throw in the part about the huge sellout of her Husband to the ChiComs in 1996, but he managed to keep her name out of it! Good doggie!

Odd in the 90s , Chinese inteligencevgives money to the ckintons, and the Chinese improve thief missiles range and accuracy. In the 00s, Russians give money to Hillary and their rockets exported to north Korea, improvevtheir range and accuracy, coincidence I'm sure

So, basically, the DNC denied a woman, Clinton, the vote, in favor of the black man, Obama. After Obama's turn, Clinton felt entitled to the Democrat nomination. To the extent that the Obama/Clinton/DNC axis denied the nomination to the Jewish man. Unfortunately, Deep Plunger, a disenfranchised Democrat insider, decided that the conspiracy had progressed too far, and he chose to expose rabid diversity at the DNC and axis factions.

The reason for Water Closet and the cover-up was because this time a Republican candidate was favored in the election, and eventually won. This is twice that Clinton was denied what she believed was her entitlement.

So, Obama spied on the Republicans, Clinton colluded with foreign (e.g. former British intelligence, post-coup government in Kiev, and disgruntled Soviet agents) and domestic (e.g. Fusion GPS) parties, and DNC denied the vote to a Jewish man, followed by a multi-trimester cover-up lead by The Washington Post, The New York Time et al that was intended to influence the election, and, if elected, to abort the Republican president.

It will be a neat trick if they can get away with this grand collusion.

In any case, we now know the order of leverage exploited by national and international left-wing interests: black, feminist, secular Jewish.

I scanned the entire document trying to figure out exactly what it was that Feinstein wanted made public, and decided the one item they wanted public was the death of a Russian aid to Selchin who is being "called" Steele's source, by many so-called pundits, for the the Page meeting even though not a single bit of evidence has been seen that this guy was a source to Steele, including from Steele himself.

I am guessing that later today you will see multiple articles going up discussing how the dossier has to be true because some guy in Russia died under mysterious circumstances- a guy no one has yet definitively declared to be a source for Steele. I am willing to bet that the Democrats are looking high and low for mysteriously dead Russians to call Steele sources right about now. It should be hilarious.

They have this policy of sending little pixel packets and they use these to track your movements on their site. If you get email from someone linking an Axios page, they will know you opened the email.

Most of us have selected "Do not track" in our browsers. Yes, well, Axios doesn't care. They track you anyway. It's in their privacy policy.

Reminds me of the woman who said no, so the man raped her. Doesn't no mean no?

I feel so dirty now, having followed that link. I may have to take a bath and scrub my genitals.

Believing that Steele was told there was a source from within the Trump Campaign by the FBI reveals one of two things- (1)Simpson was lying during his testimony or relaying a lie told to him by Steele, or (2) the FBI was already running a corrupt investigation at that point- otherwise who would tell Steele such a key piece of information? The existence of such a mole would be a closely held secret. I am willing to bet no such mole exists outside of Glenn Simpson's wishful thinking.

My overall impression of the testimony is this- it is damning to GPSFusion and Simpson- especially given what we have learned since August. There are a number of people who are going to testify to Congress in the next few weeks who will have to try to align their testimony to Simpson's- probably one of the reasons Feinstein published it- but they will have major problems in doing so since Simpson evaded and refused to answer so many key questions.

One of the major things I noted was how Simpson answered the question about having clients who paid the firm to get a government investigation started- he dodged it heroically, but this is the key question at hand- what was he told to do by Coie-Perkins? This goes to the other major thing from his testimony- he somehow forgot to mention Nellie Ohr when asked a pretty direct question about hires with her particular skill set. One strongly suspects that he was trying to hide her involvement because of her direct line to Bruce Ohr and the DoJ. The really funny thing about the Ohrs is this- the leak about Nellie Ohr's involvement with GPS was almost certainly leaked by the Democrats or GPS since it came just before GPS lost their request for an injunction over their bank records- the jig was up and they got ahead of the story.

Yancey, I agree. It’s one thing to read the whole thing, it’s another to read it in the context of what we know now, and clearly there were times he was hiding stuff, looking for ways to sound like he was answering the question while not really answering it.

I also think that it is funny that he said that Steele went to the FBI out of a sense of professional duty, but when the FBI didn’t seem to be handling it the way he would have preferred, and when they even seemed to be turning on Hillary on account of, well, the obvious crimes she had committed, he stopped talking to them.

Who the hell does Steele think he is deciding what the FBI should do with his information, and clamming up to them because they seem to be investigating his paymaster.

Oh, and Simpson found the fact that Trump went to Moscow four times and never came away with a deal highly suspicious. And he claimed that Putin had offered Trump at least four deals that were sweetened by corruption in order to compromise him, and Trump didn’t take any of them. What the fuck was up with Trump not dipping his beak in Moscow corruption!

The message she is sending is clear 'you will not be protected, your testimony will scuttle your career, and if you want to talk HERE is the Narrative and the talking points which will give the Republicans no traction.'

She is trying to scare, shame and cover the other witnesses. This was a classless, short sighted and culturally destructive action to defend ONE horrible politician whom even the Democrats are finding...inconvenient if not blatantly disliked.

Now she has made it necessary for the Republicans to make these people more scared of them than the Democrats.

What might be done? Jail terms for unhelpful witnesses. I think Lois Lerner might have a leak very soon. Rampantly destroyed careers with K Street getting memos that there are people who are poison to hire, at least for the next four years.

And if the midterms go wobbly for the Dems? They are trying to run out the clock until they have a 'friendlier' Senate.

Here is the problem. It is actions like this which have lead the Democrats to only have a thirty seven percent approval rating.

More than 54 percent find them untrustworthy. When you consider that Democrats are something like 30 percent of the population...this is bad. REALLY bad!

Based on what you isolated out I now think that Glenn Simpson, reporter, found some interesting leads suggesting Bill Clinton-China corruption back in the Nineties and these leads led to a Congressional investigation which showed that there had been payoffs. So then in the 2016 election someone came to Glenn Simpson, oppo-researcher, and said? anyhow came to him and asked him to dig up dirt suggesting Trump-China corruption. He only had to find suggestive leads and then the government - FBI, Congress - would take over. His track record would make such an investigation, based on his suggestive leads, plausible. So he is guilty in his own mind of doing nothing but looking and the FBI/Congressional/media axis is guilty of doing nothing but investigating what a sharp reporter is turning up as it did once before under the Clintons. That is what he wants people to think and that is what the FBI/Congressional/media axis wants people to think. But this time around Simpson was not a sharp reporter, he was a paid dirt-digger with a sharp shovel. The FBI/Congressional/media axis should have distinguished the situations. That little blurry bit where no one distinguishes is the corrupt bit.

And also note that the FBI is claiming that they believed Australian intelligence, not Simpson, the dirt-digger. But then they used Simpson. So they all - Simpson, FBI, Australian intelligence - have deniability though this "deniability" is like a bikini. It's more of a revelation than a cover-up. Bikini wearers know what they are doing but I have a feeling that Simpson and the FBI expected a Hillary presidency to act as burka over this bikini. They never expected to wear it in public and have the whole beach commenting on those ... revelations.

What we need is Clara Peller to ask Mueller... "WHERE'S THE BEEF?"Blogger Ray has a fascinating comment there. Who do you think may have ratted Nellie out?I'm just sayin. Nellie's license is right there on the FCC page.That is why this blog is TOPS!